I wholeheartedly concur with Ovid's 6 points. I'd add a few more.
- While you're young enough or lucky enough to have no deadlines, try to do it yourself first.
- Look to nature, everyday tasks, childs toys anywhere except the computer books for your inspiration.
- Try it on paper first.
- When you're done, and have something, working or not. Then compare your approach to that in the computer manuals or texts. Mostly you'll find a better way, but you will have learnt a lot in the process. Occasionally, you'll be pleasently surprised. When this happens, it will give you the inspiration to go on, even with the mundane tasks, and when the ogre of deadlines enters your young life.
- The joy of programming is in the doing, not in the finishing. If you find that each time you sit down to do a program, you can only think of finishing it, choose a different career.
- Have fun.
Examine what is said, not who speaks.
1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible
3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke.
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